


Fissure

by flyingllamas



Series: Lost [4]
Category: BEN Drowned, Creepypasta - Fandom, Lost Silver - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Gore, cyndaquil transitions from sock eater to worse, probably more gross than it needed to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-30 06:49:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5154257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingllamas/pseuds/flyingllamas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was supposed to be the monster, not Seth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fissure

There’s bits of fingers and an eyeball with the nerve still attached to it in the sink. He watched as the nerve slowly slipped down the drain, carried into it by the blood that just seemed to be everywhere.

(Something’s gone horribly wrong.)

 

(It wasn’t supposed to be like this again.)

 

(It wasn’t supposed to be him.)

  


(Things have been surprisingly normal the past few months.)

He never thought he’d feel this normal, be this normal ever again. Sometimes, in the evenings, he could sit on the couch with a pack of cigarettes and a controller and pretend that nothing ever went wrong with his life. He could pretend he was never a fuck-up in school, was never burned until he couldn’t scream and forgotten in a lake, that he didn’t become something other than human.

(He’s killed so many, but he’s lost count now.)

Ben couldn’t say he’s terribly upset, just...unsettled. He was on better terms with his grandfather than he ever was in life, and the old man was happier than Ben’s ever seen him. He was sharing an apartment with his best friend like many other guys his age, and they even had a pet of sorts...though he’s sure most pets don’t have teeth as sharp as this one. The number of socks lost to it though is normal, he’s sure. He still played a ton of video games, and was amused that they’ve even remade his own recently. He thought about what this could mean for him, in terms of his ‘day job’, but he hadn’t acted on it yet.

(He felt too human to do so, and it was still such a fragile thing that he doesn’t want to ruin it.)

It’s been weeks since Ben had really done anything from his ‘old’ normal, though he didn’t kid himself. Though there was now a bit of humanity in him that there wasn’t before, he was still a monster. His dreams were still filled with fire and viscera and laughter.

The dreams were far away, though, when he had his feet propped up on the shitty coffee table Seth picked up somewhere and his head resting on a patch of sunlight that came through the window just right to hit the back of the couch to make it warm without it hitting his eyes. Not that it would matter, seeing as he closed them a while back. Ben could hear the drone of some Youtuber from the TV and the hum of their crappy refrigerator and the Cyndaquil in the hallway gnawing away at the decoy sock he gave it that morning. Seth was gone right now, but it wasn’t really that surprising as he’d gone more and more lately. He left something in a crockpot on what little counter space there is in the kitchen, and it had slowly been drowning out the smell of cigarette smoke and making the apartment smell heavenly. Ben sighed.

(Ben couldn’t remember the last time he was this happy.)

His peace was shattered, though, when Jack’s obnoxious ringtone blared out from his phone, some shitty EDM the cannibal had picked out for himself. The Cyndaquil in the hall grumbled, and Ben couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment. He considered ignoring it.

(You’ll always be a monster, something in his mind told him. Do it.)

He swiped at the screen.

“What the fuck do you want?” Ben snapped into the phone. He could almost see Jack flinching away on the other end.

“We, uh, Jeff and I have a situation,” he stuttered out, and Ben hears Jeff roar in the background, “Damn right we have a situation!”

“And why does this involve me?”

“We need your area of expertise,” Jack continued. “Specifically fire. And a lot of it. And we also have one person who needs some...correction regarding going back on deals.”

Ben groaned and cradled his head in the hand not holding the phone.

“Fine,” he said. “Stay where you are. I’ll be there in a few. But you fuckers owe me, you got it?”

Before Jack can even answer, he ended the call. He had heard many different accounts of the colors of emotion, but knowing himself, his rage was as green as the tunic and and hat that he could never leave behind.

The Cyndaquil whined as it was left alone in the apartment.

(He should have been paying attention.)

 

(It was his fault this happened.)

 

Ben knew before he even arrived at the apartment that Seth had beaten him back. The signs were all around him as he traveled back, splashed all around the surrounding IP addresses like paint splattered on the wall. Usually the kid was a little better about covering his tracks, but Ben figured he probably had another nasty run-in or something on the web again.

(He never learned, it seemed, as Ben bailed him out time and time again.)

As he felt his feet touch the carpet, Ben inhaled, expecting to smell what was cooking in the crockpot and the faint smell of his own cigarettes and maybe the smell of whatever injury Seth acquired on his latest journey. His heart stopped as his body became fully tangible once more.

There was too much of it.

There was too much blood for it to be just Seth.

As he stood stock still to get a sense of what was going on, Ben knew it wasn’t Seth’s blood that he saw streaked across the carpet and couch and walls and down the hallway to the bathroom. The smell was harshly different, at least to him.

The entire apartment was deathly still and and quiet. The TV had been unplugged when something had knocked it over, and he could no longer hear the Cyndaquil in the hallway. Even the fridge was silent for once.

(A breath, in and out.)

And then, he heard it. A choked sob down the hallway, at the other end of the red path through the apartment.

He didn’t even remember running down the hallway, the blood soaking through his shoes. He couldn’t even think as he leaned heavily against the frame of the bathroom door, eyes taking in the room.

There’s so much red that he couldn’t even see the tacky colors Seth picked out months ago. It covered the walls and streaks down the shower curtain, which was closed.

(It wasn’t supposed to be, it never had been. It’d been a joke between them, a serial killer hiding their shower curtain, waiting for them in the darkness.)

He could hear it dripping down the walls and down the drain and the sunlight from the small window shone through like a macabre stained glass.

There were only two things that weren’t completely red.

Seth was curled up into a tight ball next to the bath tub. His hoodie was soaked through, but other than that only the tips of his fingers were streaked with red.

Ben’s eyes caught on the other flash of color.

There were bits of fingers and an eyeball with the nerve still attached to it in the sink. He watched as the nerve slowly slipped down the drain, carried into it by the blood that just seemed to be everywhere.

(Something’s gone horribly wrong.)

 

(It wasn’t supposed to be like this again.)

 

(It wasn’t supposed to be him.)

 

(He was supposed to be the monster.)

 

Ben’s feet slipped on the blood-slicked tile floor and he fell to the floor as he scrambled towards Seth, whose shoulders shook from sobs.

“Seth, are you okay? What happened?”

“Seth?”

  


There was a dry erase calendar in their kitchen, a stupid thing Seth had picked up to help them keep track of when the other was going to be gone for long periods, to help them remember their birth dates, and other things like meetups with others like them. Over time, it had been scribbled on with obscenities and doodles, but it usually was cleared by the beginning of every month.

(Even hell has a schedule, he’d told Seth once.)

Earlier that month, Ben had written down his death date (at least when he celebrated it), along with a note stating he would be gone. He’d noticed that towards the end of the month, there’d been a small frowning face scribbled in on the corner of one the dates. Usually Seth was a lot more plain about labeling his own things, especially because he was afraid Ben would follow him everywhere if he didn’t.

He made a mental note to ask him about it later.

 

(He never did.)

 

Seth never stopped shaking and never gave him an answer, but Ben had managed to get him out of the bathroom and in a somewhat cleaner state before leaving him on his bed.

(His cheeks were streaked with red.)

(There was still so much of it.)

He pushed the more human part of him into the back of his mind before letting the monster part of him, the part that reigned supreme after he’d touched the bottom of the lake, take control. He sighed as he looked around the apartment.

Well, they probably weren’t getting their security deposit back.

He rinsed off his hands in the kitchen sink before shooting off a text to Jack (‘I’m redeeming that favor you fuckers owe me NOW’) and returning to the bathroom with a trash can. He took a deep breath and drew back the shower curtain.

Seth had probably looked like this when died. From what he’d been told, Seth had been chopped to pieces and left for the coyotes to eat on a cold desert night.

The man in the bathtub looked like a disjointed marionette, with each limb neatly disconnected from the next at the joint. The matching eyeball to the one of the sink was currently sitting neatly in the drain of a tub, looking up at the ceiling. A look over his shoulder revealed the nerve of the other eye had descended completely down the drain, and the eye had popped itself on a detached finger nail and was leaking out fluid.

(He wondered what had prompted the separation of the parts.)

Ben had started loading the parts into the trashcan when his phone vibrated in his pocket. He fished the eye and fingers out of the sink and trashed them so he could wash his hands before answering the text. He loathed getting blood on his phone.

After informing Jack and Jeff what their penance was, he finished loading the parts into the trash before pausing.

There were only nine fingers.

Where was the tenth?

(Seth didn’t seem like the type to take trophies.)

He rinsed off his hands again before heading back down the hallway to Seth’s room. Ben quietly opened the door and peered inside. Seth had rolled over onto his side and appeared to be sleeping. However, he wasn’t the culprit Ben was after.

Kneeling down, he shone his phone light under the bed and it reflected off the opened eyes of the Cyndaquil. It growled and bared its needle-like teeth.

Between them was a gnawed-on index finger.

“Give it here, you little fucker,” he whispered and reached for it. The Cyndaquil dropped it and snapped at him.

Ben swore and shot one hand out to grab the Cyndaquil by the scruff of its neck. Flames flared out from its back and it whined.

“You know that shit doesn’t affect me,” he whispered at it and dropped his phone to snatch the finger away from it. The Cyndaquil resumed its growling as he pulled back, finger in hand, to see Seth was watching him silently.

“Sorry, was retrieving this,” Ben told him, and waved the finger in the air. “Trying to contain the mess to only most of the house, not all of it.”

Seth said nothing. There were still fresh red streaks down his face.

“Do you need anything?” he asked. Seth was still silent, but slightly shook his head.

“Okay, just let me know,” he said, and headed towards the door. He looked over his shoulder again and saw that Seth had rolled back over.

(He’s not a monster like you, the voice told him. He actually regrets what he’s done.)

Ben shut the door and headed back towards the bathroom with the finger. Just as he tossed it in the trash can, his phone rang again.

“What?” he said as he answered it, reaching into the bath tub to turn on the tap to flush out the blood.

“We’ve got everything,” Jeff told him. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Ben hung up and finished rinsing out the tub before retrieving Jeff and Jack.

“Well, I simply love what you’ve done what you’ve done with the place,” Jeff cooed, before his expression turned serious. “But really, how the fuck did you manage to wreck your apartment in the time since you saw us last, asshole?”

“It wasn’t me,” Ben said as he watched Jack haul up the TV from the floor and plug it in. Despite being dropped on the floor, it was intact, though there were three streaks of blood down the middle of it.

“Holy shit, Seth actually grew a pair?” Jeff started laughing.

The sudden but quiet crackle of fire was the only convincing he needed to fall silent.

Ben left them to get started as he retrieved a mop and bucket from the kitchen and headed back to the bathroom. Seth’s door was now cracked open and there was a set of small red footprints leading from it to the bathroom. A quick glance inside revealed Seth was still inside, probably asleep. He shut the door again.

(He wondered if Seth dreamt about his death, too, about axes and fingernails scratching at the inside of steel drums and cold desert nights.)

A crash sounded from the bathroom.

“Son of a bitch,” Ben mumbled and entered the bathroom to find the Cyndaquil, with eyes still opened, had tipped over the garbage can and was now eating the previously unpopped eyeball. He grabbed it by the scruff again and tossed it out of the bathroom before slamming the door shut, figuring the eyeball was a lost cause as long as it stayed out of the cleaner areas. A muffled ‘holy shit’ came through the door.

Ben sighed as he tossed the bucket into the tub and turned the tap on.

(This shouldn’t have been his normal.)

  


It was well into the early hours of the morning before they finished, but at least now Ben was more confident about getting the security deposit back for the apartment. Jeff had bitched the entire time about everything and anything, from the amount of blood to the Cyndaquil sneaking bits and pieces of the corpse out of the trashcan and leaving trails of blood behind him in spots they’d just cleaned.

After dropping them back off at wherever the hell they were staying, Ben collapsed on the freshly cleaned couch. He’d had a long time to think about what happened today, and he was fairly sure what caused it. The small frowning face was still on the calendar in the kitchen.

(Had it already been fifteen years?)

The Cyndaquil, with its eyes now closed, had squished underneath the sofa and was chewing on a sock once more. Though the TV was no longer on, Ben could hear the crock pot's lid rattle from built up steam and the hum of the fridge once more.

He could almost pretend like today hadn’t happened, like most of the house hadn’t been soaked with blood and that a bag full of a segmented body hadn’t gone home with Jack.

Ben stood up and walked to the kitchen, but not before delivering a swift kick to the couch which silenced the growling Cyndaquil. As he took out two plates and tortillas from the cupboard and filled them with whatever Seth had put in the crockpot, he couldn’t help but think back to when two boys, just barely teenagers, had met in an alley in Tucson years ago, both thinking they were alone in the world until that moment.

(Not everyone becomes a monster when they grow up.)

(He’s not sure if they both did or not.)

He didn’t bother knocking on Seth’s door, instead just going into the dark room. He could see Seth sit up on the bed from the small amount of light that trickled in from the hallway. Red had smeared across his face, but it at least appeared to be drying.

“Hey,” Ben said, and hesitated. What do you say to your friend who just finished murdering his step-father? “You hungry yet?”

Well, that worked, at least.

“Sure,” Seth croaked out. “I guess.”

Ben walked further into the room and sat beside him on the bed before handing him one of the plates. Seth took it with shaky hands and carefully set it down on his lap.

Neither said anything for a while as they both picked at their food. The Cyndaquil had found its way down the hallway and sat at Seth’s feet, begging. He nudged it with his foot, patting its back, but not relinquishing anything from his plate. It grumbled to itself before wandering underneath the bed.

“Was that Jack and Jeff I heard earlier?” Seth finally asked, not looking up from his plate.

“Yeah,” Ben replied, studying him out of the corner of his eye. “I’m pretty sure Jeff was traumatized by that stupid pet of yours, not that he ever really ever liked animals to begin with. Jack probably thought it was charming.”

Seth let out a quiet laugh and some of the tension in Ben’s body melted away. This, at least, was familiar. This was his friend who seemed so unadjusted and unfit to the life they lived, not the person earlier who had fallen down the same fissure he had.

(Monster.)

“I’m sorry I forgot,” Ben said. “I forget every year.”

“It’s not like it usually matters,” Seth replied. “It’s not like I really want to remember it anyway.”

“What changed this year, then?”

Seth sighed, and finally gave up on his plate and put it down on the floor. The Cyndaquil launched itself out from underneath the bed.

“I wasn’t ever going to do anything,” Seth said quietly. “First, I still thought it was my fault. I guess moved past that to justifying it as not wanting to sink down to his level.

“I thought, maybe, I could go back like you did, just this once,” he continued. “It’s been fifteen years now. Maybe see how my mom and my brother were doing from afar. She left him, you know, after he killed me. I wish she had before.”

He stopped, and let out a shuddering breath. Ben said nothing, but abandoned the pretense of looking like he was interested in his food.

“He killed her, he killed her just like he killed me and left her for the coyotes to eat. He couldn’t even leave her alone after all these years. So I did to him what he did to me, but I made him suffer. He would have died too quickly if I’d done everything the exact same way.”

He let out another breathy laugh.

“I guess I’ve picked up a thing or two from you after all.”

Something squeezed painfully inside of Ben’s chest.

(At least he wasn’t alone in being a monster anymore.)

Without a word, he stood up and took the plate from the Cyndaquil, which snapped at his hand, before taking both to the kitchen. He could hear Seth’s footsteps behind him.

“Ben?”

This wasn’t what normal was supposed to feel like. He was supposed to be the monstrous one, with Seth keeping him anchored to what little humanity he had left.

“Are you angry?”

He leaned against the counter with his hands splayed to either side of the sink and squeezed his eyes shut.

“Not with you, Seth,” he heard himself say. Some part of him laughed at his timing to disassociate. A hand covering one of his own brought him back down into his body.

“Is it what I said about you influencing me earlier?” Seth asked. “I was...I was joking. I think.”

Wonderful.

“It’s not going to happen again,” Seth said. “It’s only him. It’s only ever been him that I’ve hated enough to hurt.”

(He’d thought that too once upon a time.)

(And then he couldn’t stop.)

But then again, he seemed to be born as a monster. Seth, on the other hand…

“I know.”

“Then why--”

“It’s nothing, Seth. Try to get some sleep, it’s been a long day.”

He pulled the cord on the crockpot and slipped out of the kitchen into his own bedroom before flopping down on the bed.

(He wasn’t sure he could keep that last part of himself without Seth.)

 

It’s hours later, when his skin is on fire for the thousandth time that night before he sinks into the mud at the bottom of the lake, when his door cracked open. Ben was instantly awake and starting to sit up before he saw it was Seth. They stared at each other for a moment. Usually it’s Ben standing in the doorway to his room, not the other way around.

“When did you start dreaming about what you did?” came Seth’s quiet voice.

“The same day. It’s either that or dying, again.”

“Does it ever get better?”

(No.)

“Yes,” he lied.

Seth hovered in the doorway. Ben could see that it was at that time of day when the world is grey, when the sun just begins to rise.

“He won’t stop screaming and she won’t either.”

“I know.”

Seth didn’t look like he wanted to leave, not that he could blame him. It was different when you weren’t the one screaming in your nightmares, that the screams were because of you instead.

Ben sighed and moved over, motioning for Seth to come over. They’d done this a few times before, mostly after close calls with other creatures. It’d never been here before though, and never so close to dawn. He was always gone by the time the sun was up.

“Just close the door behind you,” he told Seth and rolled over.  “I don’t want that damn rat on my bed.”

He felt the bed sag and a weight rested against his back.

For the first time in fifteen years, he didn’t dream of fire and water filling his lungs that night.

  
  


When he woke up that afternoon, with Seth still curled up in a tight ball on the edge of his bed, he’d found the Cyndaquil had still managed to find a way in.

(This was the normal he needed.)

 

 


End file.
